


Ask and Answer

by Liar_of_Lesbos



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Gen, The Harry Potter Question
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 04:55:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8358169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liar_of_Lesbos/pseuds/Liar_of_Lesbos
Summary: He should've known this was coming.





	

**Author's Note:**

> What else could I have written about when I realized that this was a universe where all of the characters could ask each other fandom’s favorite question: which house are they in? 
> 
> This is also my first time writing a full fic in legitimate years so do forgive me and I will be supplementing this with a meta I will post later today!

Honestly, it was inevitable. What with the combination of Peter--nerd that he was--and the constant reminder of magic always lingering in their day-to-day life, he should’ve known it would come to this. Add to that the occasional silliness indulged by Peter and his truly mature peers: Nightingale should have known he’d rue the day he let Peter go traipsing around after ghosts with Sergeant Kumar and Abigail.  
  
And oh, did Nightingale now rue. The traipsing itself hadn’t led to any unfortunate deaths or suchlike, which, given Peter’s track record, seemed frankly a miracle. They didn’t even discover any theretofore unknown underground civilizations, which should have come as a relief. No. Instead, it had been a rather uneventful and altogether boring trip during which there had been much time to consider and discuss.  
  
According to parties involved, the incident started with an innocuous comment. The combined brunt of Abigail and Sergeant Kumar’s questions never wore Peter down, already prepared with an answer. And when Abigail started asking about poltergeists, and when Sergeant Kumar wanted to know if he’d met any… particular poltergeists, and of course Peter just had to let slip that Nightingale went to a magic British boarding school.  
  
A debate so epic that it lasted not only the length of time it took to hunt for the supposed ghost, but also the full time it took to get back to the Folly and in the door and right into the dining room where Nightingale sat eating, culminated in Peter bursting in front of his ghost-hunting compatriots, passion loaded in the spring of his step, a touch of anger twisted in the curling of his fingers, to ask, “Sir, which house do you think you would’ve been in at Hogwarts?”  
  
Nightingale stared at Peter in a silence that most have read as non-comprehending. In fact, he was mostly wondering if the gig was up: he had read those books many years ago--he liked keeping up with the modern ideas of magic, if only to make working with other police officers and their little digs more manageable--but Peter never needed to know that, especially after Nightingale had made him tell him the entire plot of the series. He hadn’t exactly thought about classifying himself into one of those houses from the books, but now that he considered, he supposed he’d be a Hufflepuff--duty first--and--  
  
“Peter thinks you’re all Gryffindor but I’m thinking Ravenclaw.” Abigail said.  
  
“Er,” Nightingale said.  
  
“I’m really on the fence,” Sergeant Kumar added helpfully.  
  
“Please,” Nightingale said, his voice meticulous and even. “Refrain from ever bringing this up to me again.”

 

That was supposed to be the end of it. Peter was a good listener, quick on the update, smart enough to know when to keep his mouth shut--okay, maybe that was giving him too much credit. But still: he generally knew better than to keep dogging something that Nightingale had already shut.  
  
So it did come as a surprise when, at the scene of a crime, over a coffee she was currently downing like cheap alcohol, DI Stephanopoulos said, “So, Ravenclaw or Gryffindor? I could see Slytherin, personally.”  
  
“DS Stephanopoulos,” Nightingale said. He would’ve expected this from many an officer--even a particularly rude comment from Seawoll, maybe--but Stephanopoulos had always perfectly towed the line of disapproving and polite. “What.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” DC Guleed chirped as she passed by. “Peter’s definitely a Ravenclaw.”  
  
“I wasn’t…” said Nightingale. When would Peter even mention this to his superior officers? He stopped and sighed. “May we return to the crime scene?”  
  
And so they did without much fuss, silence reigning in the gaps between crime-related conversations  
  
However, Nightingale did catch both the stoic DS Stephanopoulos and PC Guleed laughing--nearly falling on their asses with it--as he left the crime scene darkly muttering, “Peter.”

 

Nightingale expected that the scene at the crime scene, as humiliating as it was, would be the end of this obsession with his magical education. Abdul had probably got all of the Harry Potter jokes out before Peter even came into apprenticeship, and he even knew that Nightingale had actually read them. Harold probably did know enough to joke about the books but would never deign to bring it up to him. Frank certainly would never make that kind of comment, and his troopers hadn’t said anything yet at least.  
  
Who else was left to comment?  
  
Which was why, of course, it still managed to take him by surprise when he came down to the kitchen one day to see Molly sitting at the table with one of the bleeding books in her hands, a small cartoonish boy flying next to a castle right on the cover. As he moved to stand in front of her, her sharp face looked up from the book, her long black hair sliding backwards. She cocked her head.  
  
“You too?” he said.  
  
A little smile creeped on her face.  
  
“Did Peter give you this? Are you wondering which house to?”  
  
The smile twisted into something slightly more wry.  
  
“You think Hufflepuff, too?”  
  
A shrug. Looking at her hands.  
  
Nightingale smiled, an intimately fond affair, one saved for those who knew-you-longest and loved-you-most.  
  
“Me too,” he said. In the span of one long breath, he unfolded his paper and sat down at the table right next to Molly, the only one who had seen him when he was just a young lad, when he had explored and dashed about the continent, when he had left everything behind for war, and when he had left everything behind again to take up this duty for however long he had to.  
  
The silence they shared settled in like a cat stretching to lay down in the sun. Comfortable.


End file.
